


from the mouths of babes and muppets

by ninemoons42



Category: Sesame Street (TV), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Erik is a Sweetheart, Gen, Introspection, M/M, On Set, Sesame Street
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik thinks he's getting roped into this whole TV song-and-dance thing - but all that changes once he gets dropped onto the set.</p><p>That might be courtesy of a certain monobrowed, green monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	from the mouths of babes and muppets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/gifts).



He starts to panic - in a very quiet and very dignified manner, of course - as soon as Charles points the car in the direction of Queens. 

“Do I have to?” Erik asks. Yesterday’s change flies up from his pocket and from one of the compartments of Charles’s battered briefcase. The coins sparkle and catch in the wan morning sunlight.

Charles smiles, and changes lanes expertly, and when he tilts his head he’s still looking straight ahead but Erik gets the sense that the gestures are really for his benefit. “I think I’ve said it more than enough times, Erik: I’m appearing on the show, and they’ve got you very lightly penciled in, and you don’t have to do the segment but I’m pretty sure you’d be good in it. Besides, think of the children’s reactions. If Wanda sees you on the show, she’ll be hanging off your shoulders for the next decade.”

Erik closes his eyes and grins, for a moment, because he likes Wanda hanging on to him, her warm weight dangling from his shoulders, her chubby arms clasped around his neck. He may or may not make a point out of spending a few minutes walking around with her clutching his back like a tiny, tiny koala (complete with the minty smell, though it’s peppermint and not eucalyptus, because she likes that kind of candy too much).

But the grin vanishes in the next instant when he remembers what it is, exactly, that he’s been penciled in for. “Can’t I just - talk directly to the camera? I’ve never been a fan of puppets. Muppets. Any of it.”

“And Raven says I was born fifty years old,” Charles says, chuckling softly. “I don’t think she’s ever going to get over the fact that you don’t see the point of _Sesame Street_.”

Erik shrugs, fumes, just a little. “And you’re still watching it years after you should have outgrown it.”

He gets a quiet _tsk_ ing sound in response. “I don’t _intend_ to outgrow the Muppets, thank you very much. They were very good company for me, when I was growing up. Sometimes the only company. 

“And that’s to say nothing of the children, who _are_ growing up with them, right now.”

As soon as they’re in Astoria Charles begins to tap his fingertips on the steering wheel. 

Erik knows the rhythm because it’s the only song all three of their children ever agree on, and they seem to sing it several times a day, for reasons that only the three of them know.

The point is, Erik just went straight from cradle songs to cartoons, and he doesn’t know what it’s like to interact with cloth and stitches and - he doesn’t know - pipe cleaners? What else is needed to manipulate puppets anyway? Wooden bits and string?

Charles gives his name and an ID to the guard at the gate that says _Kaufman Astoria Studios_ , and is directed to a specific parking area, and the building that looms over them is gray and huge and featureless.

That is, on the outside.

Erik’s out of the car before the engine’s fully gone quiet. Hands at his sides. 

“You need a place this big,” he asks, “for a TV show?”

“It’s not just any TV show,” Charles says.

At the door, a young man in a buttoned-up shirt and inappropriately orange rubber shoes greets them. “Mister Xavier and Mister Lehnsherr? So pleased to meet you. I’m going to be running around with you today. My name is Jono.”

“Pleased to meet you,” is Charles’s easy reply. “May we see the set first?”

Sometimes Erik still envies his husband that ease with others.

What he did - what he still does, after a fashion - can’t always be accomplished in a polite conversation over tea and scones and social niceties, after all.

“Certainly,” Jono says. 

Erik tunes them out, for a moment, as he follows Charles.

Just as Jono says “It’s a big space, cavernous, more than enough room for an audience - ” they step through the doors, and Erik stops and stares.

There is nothing cavernous about the set - or part of it - he’s stepped into.

Here is a door and here is a stoop, and a set of stairs. Boxes full of ripped-up paper, discarded batteries, carbonated-drink cans stomped flat.

Erik walks right up to the battered-looking trash can right in the middle of the corner and pokes the lid, twice. Once with his finger, and once with the barest whisper of his ability.

No response.

“What lives in here,” he asks in Charles’s general direction.

There’s no response to that, either, and he looks around at the conglomerations of wire and metal and the klieg lights, taking in the scene.

He’s been on sets before, but nothing as small and lived-in and - to be frank - messy as this.

He only realizes he’s said that last part out loud when, of all the things, it gets him a response.

“Well I should hope it’s messy,” comes an irritated voice from somewhere nearby. “I want it messy. I want my home to be messy!”

“What the - ”

The lid on the trash can flips open.

“Hey, you, stranger,” says the mass of green fuzz and single eyebrow and googly eyes. “What’re you doing on my turf?”

Erik blinks, reaches out for Charles’s mind. _Charles?_

 _Answer him,_ Charles says.

“Not helpful,” Erik mutters, in lieu of a few choice oaths.

“Oh, are you paying me a compliment? That’s very grouchy of you.” The green leans toward Erik. “But you don’t look like a grouch.”

“I’m - not one,” Erik says, carefully.

“You look human to me.”

“I’m not exactly that either.”

That gets him a laugh, brief and raucous and derisive. “Okay, so what are you then? Or should I just make up a name for what you are? How about - ”

“Mutant,” Erik says. “I’m a mutant. Not exactly a human. I’m - human-shaped. But a mutant.”

He’s never considered the possibility of something that isn’t alive shrugging insolently at him. “You sure look like most people living on this street to me.” 

“Does that include you?”

“Yeah. This is my part of the street. The trash heap. The right place for a grouch! I’m Oscar the Grouch! And who are _you_?”

“Erik Lehnsherr,” Erik says. “I was once known as Magneto.”

“That’s a name that sounds familiar. Twenty years ago,” Oscar snickers.

Erik pauses, thinks about it, tells Oscar the truth. “I gave it up. The name, I mean.”

“Yeah, why?”

“I - ” Erik hesitates. Thinks about where he is right now. He’s about to engage a puppet in a conversation. 

He looks over his shoulder, and there’s no one in sight: the only thing stirring nearby is Oscar.

He sends a thought to Charles - _Help?_ \- and then he squares his shoulders, looks Oscar in his trash can straight in the eyes. “I found something better to do.”

“Yeah?” Now that he’s paying attention, Erik can’t help but hear the distinct nasal gargle of that voice, and there’s a part of his memories that seems to be responding to it, as if it were a sound he’d heard, somewhere and somewhen. “Like what?”

“I learned a lesson about tearing things down and building things back up.”

Oscar responds with another impossibility: a raised monobrow that is as eloquent as one of Charles’s pointed silences. Worlds of commentary: _Oh really? Show me. Convince me._

For a moment he thinks of the way Pietro scrunches up his nose when he’s about to fire a smart-ass remark at someone who’s gotten on his wrong side.

And he continues as though Pietro were there in the studio with him, as though they’re standing next to each other for a quiet just-them conversation. “The world is full of things that we need to break down. We can’t attack someone else just because that person looks different, seems different, believes in different things, does different things, has a different ability or abilities. It’s called prejudice, and it never did us anything good.”

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know?” Oscar snarks. “Even kids know about that.”

“Those of us who fight prejudice,” Erik says, putting his hands in his pockets to extract the same coins from earlier, “have to deal with our own prejudices, too.”

The coins float up and begin to whirl around his outstretched hand, intricate spiraling loops and orbits.

Oscar reaches up with one - hand? paw? - and bats at one of the coins, which falls away from the others and begins to spin around his head instead. “Fancy trick,” he says, begrudging.

“I can do more,” Erik says, “but I don’t want to tear your house up.”

There’s a pause, and then, “Yeah, you’re right, my house, I don’t want you doing anything to it.”

He gives Oscar a slightly lopsided smile - brief, there and gone as quickly as it’d come.

“Cut,” someone calls.

A scattering of applause.

Erik blinks, and turns around to look, and Charles and Jono are several feet away, clapping.

Behind them there’s a large group of children. Some of them are very clearly mutants. A girl with round eyeglasses and lizard scales is holding the hand of a boy who has a third eye in the center of his forehead. Another boy has a cat’s slender tail, and another girl has color-shifting hair. 

The rest of the children look baseline, but Erik’s not taking any chances on thinking that they _have_ to be.

“Charles,” he says, reaching out for that familiar freckled hand. “Did that just - what did you - ”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Erik blinks when Charles offers him a glimpse of his own mind. He’d been just as surprised by the appearance of the Muppet as Erik was, and he’d been just as surprised at the direction that the conversation had taken.

“So how did the Muppet - Oscar - and I just do that?”

Charles smiles, offers a shrug, and looks mystified.

Jono has gone over to the teacher leading the group of children, and he beckons Erik over now. “Excuse me, sir. This is Kitty Pryde, and she’d like to speak with you for a moment?”

Erik looks at Charles. 

“Go on,” Charles says, encouragingly.

He shakes hands with Kitty - and she _flickers_. There’s no other word for it. One moment he’s holding her hand, then he’s looking through her and there’s nothing for his fingers to hold on, and then - she’s back. “Hello, Mr Lehnsherr,” she says, politely. “That was - that was a wonderful thing you just did back there.”

“Thank you,” Erik says, automatically. And: “Your ability?”

“I can phase, sir. I can become tangible or intangible.”

“That’s a wonderful ability,” Charles says as he joins the group.

“This is Charles Xavier, my husband,” Erik says.

The children say “Oooh” in response.

“It’s an honor to meet you both,” Kitty says. “I mean, these children already know your names, I think, or they should soon enough.”

“Just meeting them, and you, in and of itself - that’s an honor that’s all ours,” Charles says.

And then the children begin to crowd in, and ask questions, and Erik is occupied with them for a few moments when Charles pulls him into the discussion.

But during a break in the conversation he looks over his shoulder at Oscar - now really just a mass of green fuzz, slumped over with eyes closed - and he finds himself looking forward to the rest of this show, to the segment he’s actually supposed to be doing, and to the truths that he can share.

Maybe this is the kind of conversation he can devote himself to.

**Author's Note:**

> Happiest of birthdays, Afrocurl!


End file.
